Leonardo DiCaprio’s ‘The Revenant’ Dazzles Exhibitors at CinemaCon

“The Revenant,” Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s first film since “Birdman,” received a warm reaction Thursday as Fox unveiled the first footage at CinemaCon.

A scraggly Leonardo DiCaprio, who stars as a fur trapper in the 1820s, dominated the footage — which included several battle scenes set alongside a river. Fox said Inarritu is shooting in the Canadian wilderness, using only natural light.

In his intro, Fox chief Jim Gianopulos — who hosted the hourlong event with new studio co-chair Stacey Snider — noted that Fox Searchlight and New Regency have won back-to-back Best Picture Oscars with “12 Years a Slave” and “Birdman.”

New Regency and Brett Ratner’s Ratpac Entertainment are financing the survival drama. Twentieth Century Fox plans to open the film in limited release on Christmas Day next year before a wide release on Jan. 8, 2016.

The footage also included glimpses of co-stars Tom Hardy and Will Poulter. Gonzalez Inarritu and Mark Smith wrote the screenplay based on the Michael Punke novel “The Revenant: A Novel of Revenge” published in 2003. The story, set in 1823, centers on a fur trapper who’s mauled by a grizzly bear and robbed by the two men enlisted to stay with him.

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